8 How do you say, We are wise, and the law of Yahweh is with us? But, behold, the false pen of the scribes has worked falsely.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
Interpreters think that the Prophet here directs his words to the priests, and the false prophets, and the other chiefs of the people, because they proudly arrogated to themselves the knowledge of the law: but what is said may be no less extended to the whole people; for, as we shall presently see, all of them, from the least to the greatest, no doubt boasted that they were sufficiently wise. I hence think that the Prophet here inveighs against the whole body of the people; for all, almost without exception, rejected his teaching, as we see also to be done at the present day; for who is there that can bear to be admonished and reproved? All say that they are wise enough: "Oh! do you think that I am a child?" or, as it is commonly said, "Do you think that I am a goose? I know how I am to live, and I am not without reason." Thus the rudest and the most ignorant set up their own wisdom and sharpness of wit against God and his prophets. Such audacity and ferociousness prevailed no doubt in the time of Jeremiah. For when he sharply reproved them, they were ready with their answer, -- "Oh! thou treatest us as though we were barbarians, as though God's law was unknown to us, as though we had not been taught from our childhood how we are to live: does not God dwell in the midst of us?" Since, then, the Jews did set up as it were this shield against the doctrine of the Prophet, he attacks them here with great vehemence, -- How say ye, We are wise? He afterwards describes the kind of wisdom which they claimed, The law of God is with us: and doubtless, to attend to God's law is the way of becoming really wise. Had they justly boasted that they had the law, the Prophet would not have brought against them the charge, that they were doubly foolish. But as they falsely made this pretense, he says to them, How? and here he asks a question as to what was very strange, "How are you so foolish, "he says, "that ye think yourselves wise, as though the law of God were with you? Surely, if so, in vain has the law been written; for ye shew by your whole life that you have never known anything of what God by the law commands and sets before us, and what the design of it is." Thus Jeremiah shows by their life that there was no ground for their foolish boasting; for they gave no evidence of their wisdom. It is indeed necessary for those who seek to be God's disciples to bring forth some fruit: but as there was among them so much impiety, so much contempt of God, and as, in short, their whole life proclaimed them to be wholly insane, he says, In vain has he prepared his pen, even the writer of the law; and in vain have been the scribes, that is, the teachers; for by scribes, in the second place, he understands teachers. [1] I explain this passage somewhat different from other interpreters; for there seems to be implied a kind of irony, as we commonly say, Il faut bruler tous les livres. Hence Jeremiah derides their folly, in saying that they knew how they were to live, because the teaching of the law prevailed among them. "If it be so, "he says, "what is God's law? Doubtless, nothing, as the whole of its teaching must in this way be deemed as nothing." We now then see that the Jews are here reproved as false, for they claimed the law, as though it were a shadow without a body, and possessed not a particle of right knowledge. He afterwards adds --
1 - The latter part of this verse has another meaning according to the ancient versions. They are substantially to this purport, -- Behold, surely to deceive is what the false pen of the scribes has done. The Vulgate, with which the rest materially agree, is as follows, -- Verily, falsehood has the false pen of the scribes wrought. As a proof of this it is added in the next verse, that those who pretended to be wise were made ashamed, etc. That the reference is made to the false glosses of the scribes, the expounders of the law, is confirmed by verse 11. I render the whole verse thus, -- 8. How can ye say, "Wise are we, And the law of Jehovah is with us?" Indeed! -- Behold, to deceive Has the deceptive pen of the scribes served. He ironically admits that they had the law; but he refers to the false interpretation of the teachers; and in the next verse he mentions the effect on the pretended wise, and the fact as to God's law, -- 9. Ashamed have become the wise, They have been dismayed and ensnared: Behold, the word of Jehovah have they despised; And wisdom, what have they! -- Ed.
The law of the Lord - The "Torah," or written law, the possession of which made the priests and prophets so boastfully exclaim, "We are wise."
Lo, certainly - Rather, Verily, lo! the lying pen "of the scribes" hath made it - the Law - into a lie. The mention of "scribes" in this place is a crucial point in the argument whether or not the Pentateuch or Torah is the old law-book of the Jews, or a fabrication which gradually grew up, but was not received as authoritative until after the return from the captivity. It is not until the time of Josiah 2-Chronicles 34:13 that "scribes" are mentioned except as political officers; here, however, they are students of the Torah. The Torah must have existed in writing before there could have been an order of men whose special business it was to study it; and therefore to explain this verse by saying that perhaps the scribes were writers of false prophecies written in imitation of the true, is to lose the whole gist of the passage. What the scribes turned into a lie was that Law of which they had just boasted that they were the possessors. Moreover, the scribes undeniably became possessed of preponderating influence during the exile: and on the return from Babylon were powerful enough to prevent the restoration of the kingly office. That there should be along with the priests and Levites men who devoted themselves to the study of the written Law, and who in the time of Josiah had acquired such influence as to be recognized as a distinct class - is just what we should expect from the rapid progress of learning, which began with Elisha's active management of the schools of the prophets, and culminated in the days of Hezekiah. Jeremiah's whole argument depends upon the fact that there were in his days men who claimed to be "wise" or "learned" men because of their study of the Pentateuch, and is entirely inconsistent with the assumptions that Jeremiah wrote the book of Deuteronomy, and that Ezra wrote parts of Exodus and the whole of Leviticus.
The pen of the scribes is in vain - The deceitful pen of the scribes. They have written falsely, though they had the truth before them. It is too bold an assertion to say that "the Jews have never falsified the sacred oracles;" they have done it again and again. They have written falsities when they knew they were such.
How do ye say, We [are] wise, and the law of the LORD [is] with us? Lo, certainly in vain he hath made [it]; (f) the pen of the scribes [is] in vain.
(f) The law does not profit you neither need it to have been written for all that you have learned by it.
How do ye say, we are wise,.... Which they were continually boasting of, though they were ignorant of the judgment of the Lord, and were more stupid than the stork, turtle, crane, and swallow:
and the law of the Lord is with us? this was the foundation of their boast, because the law was given to them, and not to the nations of the world, which knew not God, and therefore they must be a wise and understanding people; and this law continued with them, they had it in their synagogues, and in their houses, and read it, and heard, or at least they might and ought to have heard and read it, and in this they trusted; of this character and cast were the Jews in the times of Christ and his apostles, Romans 2:17 to which agrees the Targum,
"how say ye, we are wise, and in the law of the Lord we trust?''
Lo, certainly in vain made he it; either the law, which was made or given in vain by the Lord to this people, since they made no better use of it, and valued themselves upon having it, without acting according to it; or the pen of the scribe, which was made by him in vain to write it, as follows:
the pen of the scribes is in vain; in vain, and to no purpose, were the scribes employed in writing out copies of the law, when either it was not heard or read, or however the things it enjoined were not put in practice; or the pen of the scribes was in vain, when employed in writing out false copies of the law, or false glosses and interpretations of it, such as were made by the Scribes and Pharisees in Christ's time, and the fathers before them, by whose traditions the word of God was made of none effect: and so the Targum,
"therefore, lo, in vain the scribe hath made the lying pen to falsify;''
that is, the Scriptures. The words may be rendered,
"verily, behold, with a lie he wrought; the pen: is the lie of the scribes (h).''
(h) "utique ecce, mendacio operatus est; stylus mendacium scribarum est", Schmidt. Approved by Reinbeck. De Accent. Hebrews. p. 435.
law . . . with us-- (Romans 2:17). Possessing the law, on which they prided themselves, the Jews might have become the wisest of nations; but by their neglecting its precepts, the law became given "in vain," as far as they were concerned.
scribes--copyists. "In vain" copies were multiplied. MAURER translates, "The false pen of the scribes hath converted it [the law] into a lie." See Margin, which agrees with Vulgate.
In spite of this heedlessness of the statutes, the judgment of God, they vainly boast in their knowledge and possession of God's law. Those who said, We are wise, are mainly the priests and false prophets; cf. Jeremiah 8:10, Jeremiah 2:8; Jeremiah 5:31. The wisdom these people claimed for themselves is, as the following clause shows, the knowledge of the law. They prided themselves on possessing the law, from which they conceived themselves to have drawn their wisdom. The second clause, as Hitz. observed, shows that it is the written law that is meant. The law is with us. This is not to be understood merely of the outward possession of it, but the inward, appropriated knowledge, the mastery of the law. The law of Jahveh, recorded in the Pentateuch, teaches not only the bearing towards God due by man, but the bearing of God towards His people. The knowledge of this law begets the wisdom for ruling one's life, tells how God is to be worshipped, how His favour is to be procured and His anger appeased.
As against all this, Jeremiah declares: Assuredly the lying pen (style) of the scribes hath made it a lie. Ew., Hitz., Graf, translate ספרים, authors, writers; and the two latter of them take עשׂה = labour: "for a lie (or for deception) hath the lying style (pen) of the writers laboured." This transl. is feasible; but it seems simpler to supply 'תּורת יי: hath made it (the law); and there is no good reason for confining סופר to the original composers of works. The words are not to be limited in their reference to the efforts of the false prophets, who spread their delusive prophecies by means of writings: they refer equally to the work of the priests, whose duty it was to train the people in the law, and who, by false teaching as to its demands, led the people astray, seduced them from the way of truth, and deceived them as to the future. The labours both of the false prophets and of the wicked priests consisted not merely in authorship, in composing and circulating writings, but to a very great extent in the oral teaching of the people, partly by prophetic announcements, partly by instruction in the law; only in so far as it was necessary was it their duty to set down in writing and circulate their prophecies and interpretations of the law. But this work by word and writing was founded on the existing written law, the Torah of Moses; just as the true prophets sought to influence the people chiefly by preaching the law to them, by examining their deeds and habits by the rule of the divine will as revealed in the Torah, and by applying to their times the law's promises and threatenings. For this work with the law, and application of it to life, Jeremiah. uses the expression "style of the Shoferim," because the interpretation of the law, if it was to have valid authority as the rule of life, must be fixed by writing. Yet he did not in this speak only of authors, composers, but meant such as busied themselves about the book of the law, made it the object of their study. But inasmuch as such persons, by false interpretation and application, perverted the truth of the law into a lie, he calls their work the work of the lying style (pen).
How - These things considered where is your wisdom? He speaks to the whole body of the people. The Lord - This may have a more special eye to the priests. In vain - For any use they made of it; neither need it ever have been copied out by the scribe. A scribe was a teacher, one well versed in the scripture, or esteemed to be so.
*More commentary available at chapter level.